Bits and Pieces for the Week of June 26 - July 2

Maybe you've seen this a dozen times. It never ceases to be funny. A holiday weekend treat. (Mike)

Gov. Jerry Brown for months bent over backwards trying to get the California Republican legislators to work with him and Democratic legislators on the State budget. Yesterday he finally gave up and the Democrats have submitted a budget that will likely get passed this week. Even the Republican-dominated California Chamber of Commerce is pissed at the Republicans for being totally intransigent during budget negotiations. (Mike)
A cure for Type 2 Diabetes (Mike)
Portable cell phone towers for disaster areas (Mike)

Andrew Sullivan gets to the heart of the matter. "These current Republicans would rather destroy the US economy than sacrifice one scintilla of ideological purity. They are an imminent threat to the stability of this country's economy and the world's. And they must be stopped before the damage is irreversible." (7 of 6)

WHO OWNS AMERICA

Americans in the top 1% income bracket own nearly 34% of the nation's wealth.

Americans in the top 10% income bracket own 71.5% of the nation's wealth.

Americans in the top 50% income bracket own 97.5% of the nations's wealth.

The median household income is around $45,000. Still wondering who owns America?

Will you help Senator Sanders expose the Koch Echo Chamber?

I can only hope that more people will understand the extent of the Koch Brothers (and many other multi-millionaire and billionaires) reach into changing laws, influence peddling, and disinformation... all to help their long run profitability at the expense of the working class.

Consumer beware: This Apple Juice Drink contains no apple juice:

Maybe Republicans have a point. Why have consumer protection agencies in government when consumers don't even read the government-mandated labels containing the package ingredients?

Bits and Pieces for the Week of June 19 - 25

Friday Fun: Flow Chart for determining when to forward a funny email (Mike)
This should help you sleep more peacefully at night: "US nuke regulators weaken safety rules" (Mike)
WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE: More Supreme Court news: Another blow to human rights: SCOTUS supports discrimination against females. (Mike)

Resign Justice Clarence Thomas... it is clear who your allegiance is too! "Just eight months after ThinkProgress broke the story of Thomas’ attendance at a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser, we learn... conservative donor Harlan Crow, whose company often litigates in federal court, donated $500,000 to allow Thomas’s wife to start a Tea Party group and he once gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. The American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which frequently files briefs in Thomas’ Court, also gave Thomas a $15,000 gift." (7 of 6)

"There is substantial evidence that some of these fires have been caused by people who have crossed our border illegally. They have set fires because they want to signal others. They have set fires to keep warm. And they have set fires in order to divert law enforcement agents and agencies from them. So the answer to that part of the problem is get a secure border." - The New Racist... John McCain! (7 of 6)

Designed to Kill

An outstanding "essay" on so called "border security." Please read the whole article.

Border Policy & How to Change It For a number of years now I’ve worked in the desert on the Mexican-American border with a group that provides humanitarian aid to migrants who are attempting to enter the United States—a journey that claims hundreds of lives every year. We’ve spent years mapping the trails that cross this desert. We walk the trails, find places to leave food and water along them, look for people in distress, and provide medical care when we run into someone who needs it. If the situation is bad enough, we can get an ambulance or helicopter to bring people to the hospital. We strive to act in accordance with the migrants’ wishes at all times, and we never call the Border Patrol on people who don’t want to turn themselves in. During this time I’ve been a part of many extraordinary situations and I’ve heard about many more. Some of the things I’ve seen have been truly heartwarming, and some of them have been deeply sad and wrong. I’ve seen people who were too weak to stand, too sick to hold down water, hurt too badly to continue, too scared to sleep, too sad for words, hopelessly lost, desperately hungry, literally dying of thirst, never going to be able to see their children again, vomiting blood, penniless in torn shoes two thousand miles from home, suffering from heat stroke, kidney damage, terrible blisters, wounds, hypothermia, post-traumatic stress, and just about every other tribulation you could possibly think of. I’ve been to places where people were robbed and raped and murdered; my friends have found bodies. In addition to bearing witness to others’ suffering, I myself have fallen off of cliffs, torn my face open on barbed wire, run out of water, had guns pointed at me, been charged by bulls and circled by vultures, jumped over rattlesnakes, pulled pieces of cactus out of many different parts of my body with pliers, had to tear off my pants because they were full of fire ants, gotten gray hairs, and in general poured no small amount of my own sweat, blood, and tears into the thirsty desert. There is nowhere on earth like the place where we work. It is beautiful beyond telling: harsh, vast, mountainous, remote, rugged, unforgiving, every cliché you can think of and more. I have been humbled countless times by the incredible selflessness and courage of the people that I have met there, and I have been driven nearly out of my head with rage at the utterly heartless economic and political system that drives people to such lengths in order to provide for their families. Doing this work has given me a great deal of opportunity to observe how the border is managed on a day-to-day basis, and hopefully some insight into the functions that it performs within global capitalism—the real objectives that it serves. I offer this essay as ammunition to anyone who still cares enough about anything to intervene when people around them are being treated like pieces of meat. The first thing that I want to make clear is that the atrocious suffering that happens on the border every day is not an accident. It is not a mistake and it is not the result of a misunderstanding. It is the predictable and intentional result of policies implemented at every level of government on both sides of the border. These policies have rational objectives and directly benefit identifiable sectors of the population of both countries. It may be evil, but it’s not stupid. If this sounds a little shrill, let me tell you how I’ve seen this play out on the ground. When I started working in the desert I began to notice some very peculiar things about the Border Patrol’s operations there. They would do a lot of enforcement in some areas and very little in others, and this would not necessarily correspond to which areas were busy and which areas were slow. In fact, very often the enforcement would clearly be done in such a way that it would push traffic into rather than out of the busiest areas, where Border Patrol would keep a low profile until the very northern end of the route. At that point there would be a moderate amount of enforcement again, but not really what you would expect given the numbers of people that were moving through. Then they started building lots of surveillance towers. But once again, the towers were not really built in the places where the traffic was heaviest—they were built on the edges of them. If anything, they seemed to be intent on forcing traffic into the busiest routes rather than out of them. What was happening? Meanwhile, I was constantly meeting migrants whose groups had been split up by helicopters. The Border Patrol would fly over them a few feet off the ground, everybody would run in different directions, and soon there would be thirty people wandering lost across the desert in groups of two or three. What seemed particularly odd was that the Border Patrol often made no effort to actually apprehend these groups after breaking them up—they just flew away. Why? And then there’s this. Over the last few years, the organization I work for has developed a pretty comprehensive understanding of the area we cover, which at times has been one of the most heavily traveled sections of the entire border. We’ve formed a fairly clear picture of where traffic starts, where it goes, how it gets there, where it’s busy and where it’s slow at any given time, where the pinch points are, and so on. I honestly believe that if I worked for the Border Patrol I could basically point at a map and tell them how to shut down the whole sector. It’s really not rocket science. Keep in mind that all of our work has been done by untrained civilian volunteers, armed with low-end GPS units, a few old trucks, run-of-the-mill mapping software, cheap cell phones with spotty service, and a very limited budget. Does it seem logical that we could figure this stuff out while the government of the United States of America cannot, despite access to helicopters, unmanned drones, electronic sensors, fleets of well-maintained trucks, night vision systems, state-of-the-art communications and surveillance and mapping technology, tens of thousands of paid employees, and a limitless supply of money to shovel down the hole at every possible opportunity? I don’t think it does. So what’s going on? If you accept the stated objectives of the border at face value, then none of this makes any sense at all. If you accept that the actual objectives may not be the stated ones, things start to come together fast. The task of the Border Patrol—and the actual objective of the policies it is there to enforce—is not in any sense to STOP ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. It is to manage and control that migration. Trust me on this. But to what end? To whose benefit? Settle in, because it’s complicated.

Bits and Pieces for the Week of June 12 - 18

Now that global climate change is happening, the U.S. government is going to cut funding for satellites used in weather forcasting. (Mike)
Yes, the United Nations is much more progressive than the United States. (Mike)
Recently the national student loan debt became greater than consumer debt. But, when considering unemployment, having a bachelor's degree is still best. (Mike)
WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE: If there's a specific reason why Obama insists on continuing this horrible policy of the Bush era, such as preventing a KNOWN threat to us, then he should at least have the balls to tell us. (Mike)
Some of these penny pinchers have pretty good ideas. (Mike)

Wisconsin Supreme Court upholds anti-union bill. Wonder if the Supreme Court of the United States will hear this case? And where do the GOP Presidential candidates stand on this issue? More importantly, President Obama needs to speak out on this immediately. (7 of 6)

This stuff is pretty incredible. (Mike)
This NYC bicyclist knows how to make a point about an unfair law. (Mike)
I'm sending my name to Mars (Mike)
WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE: Citibank delays notifying customers about hacked accounts (Mike)
Terrific News: Solar Power installation costs are plummeting (Mike)

"Ensuring that an azalea collection is maintained and giving more funding to wildlife damage management are fine goals, but the GOP is trumpeting this bill — which cuts off hundreds of thousands of women and children from nutrition assistance and prevents regulators from reining in oil speculation that is out of control as a reflection of their priorities. If that is true, it’s a pretty stark statement as to what House Republicans find important." The heartless! (7 of 6)

Give us your cash, bitch

Possibly the worst Republican campaign ad ever:

Is text messaging peaking:

"....For the top two carriers in the U.S., Verizon and AT&T, things are even more disconcerting. According to Journal, the average Verizon customer sent out 2,068 text messages in the fourth quarter of 2010. During the third quarter of last year, that figure was at 2,110. Citing a report from analysts at UBS, the Journal pointed out that text messaging was down 21 percent in the first quarter for AT&T, compared to the same period a year prior. "The importance of text messaging on a carrier's bottom line cannot be underestimated. Referencing the UBS report once again, the Journal said that the average carrier makes an 80-cent profit on every single dollar it generates in text-messaging revenue...."

I don't know what's more surprising, that the average Verizon customer texts over 2,000 time a year (it's more like 20 for me) or that the carrier has an 80% profit margin on texting.

This should get you going...

Bits and Pieces for the Week of June 5 - 11

AZ State Senate President, Russel Pearce, of noted SB1070 fame is facing a recall by hard working, dedicated AZ residents. The AZ citizens collected more signatures than Pearce was elected by in the last election. Here, Pearce uses his State office stationary to question the Attorney General on his behalf if his anti-recall effort can take corporate campaign contributions. Just a mean spirited man trying to save his bigoted ass! (7 of 6)

Do you REALLY need to turn off your cell phone on a flight? (Mike)
A blow to blow jobs (Mike)
A Senior Meteorologist at the Weather Channel looks back at the recent tornado outbreak. (Mike)
I never eat fish, so don't blame me for this horrendous situation. (Mike)

'Patriotic Millionaires' Ask Obama, Congress To Raise Their Taxes. These are truly "Patriotic Americans", where they are willing to give back to a country that they have been successful in. (7 of 6)

The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families. Something everyone should know... it really boils down to a few select families who control everything! And please understand all you conservatives and republi-con supporters... you will never, ever belong to this elite group of families. Tax the Rich! (7 of 6)

20 Facts About U.S. Inequality that Everyone Should Know. Outstanding research Stanford University! Thank you, I love graphs! (7 of 6)

The Real Traitors to America

Goons in Gucci's So where does this sudden, multi-state offensive against the hard-won rights, protections, and democratic power of America's wage earners come from? From the top--from a relative handful of arrogantly rich, right-wing families and corporate chieftains who have long been dedicated to disarming labor, repealing the New Deal, and returning America to the glory days when robber barons ruled. These particular moneyed elites have not idly dreamed of going back to the future, they've been investing hundreds of millions of dollars during the past four decades to assemble a shadowy network of hired political thugs to get them there. [HISTORICAL FLASHBACK: In the fierce labor wars of the last century, industrial barons employed Pinkertons and other goons to bloody the heads of laborers or simply gun down those struggling for a share of economic and political power. It was brutal, but organized workers persevered and eventually gained a share of economic and political power. From their sweat and blood, America's middle class flowered.] Today, the bands of nouveau corporate royalists (with coats of arms bearing such names as Coors, DeVos, Koch, Scaife, and Walton) are determined to take back those middle-class gains of yesteryear. They are working to achieve this through a coordinated, long-term campaign to (1) crush the ability of working people to unionize, (2) bust America's middle-class wage structure, (3) eliminate job security, and (4) emasculate government as a force capable of controlling corporate avarice and arrogance. These latter-day royalists are employing a more sophisticated thuggery than brute force (though don't think they wouldn't resort to it). Instead, their goons are more likely to be in Gucci's than brogans, using dollars and computers rather than clubs and guns. They have been recruiting, financing, training, deploying, and coordinating thousands of political operatives to work through hundreds of front groups, law firms, think tanks, PACs, lobbying offices, media and PR consortiums, faux academic centers, astroturf campaigns, and--of course--compliant politicians. Among the compliant is our covey of hyperactive governors, all carrying basically the same anti-worker, anti-democratic policy ideas. Their unified agenda wasn't produced by telepathy or freakish happenstance, but by AFC, ALEC, IFL, SPN,* and other obscure organizational acronyms unknown to 99 percent of Americans. But Daniels of Indiana, Walker of Wisconsin, Kasich of Ohio, Scott of Florida, and the rest of the covey have these organizations on speed dial. Behind the non-descript acronyms are aggressive and insidious right-wing wonk shops that have been set up and richly financed by the corporatists to prepare and hand-deliver pro-corporate programs to compliant governors and key legislators. Once delivered, the organizations work (usually clandestinely) to get the programs enacted. Let's peek inside a couple of these acronyms. 2. AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL. "With nearly 2,000 members" explains a brochure of this secretive organization, "ALEC is the nation's largest nonpartisan, individual membership association of state legislators." Maybe your very own local lawmaker is one of them--but you won't get that information from ALEC, which hides its list of legislators from public view. Nonpartisan? Its website lists 22 legislators from around the country who serve as board members and officers of this tax-exempt legislative service organization. All are Republican. In fact, only token numbers of Democrats are allowed in the club, and all inductees are individually vetted to make sure they will adhere to ALEC's corporate dogma. Which brings us to the organization's pose as an association of legislators. The "exchange" in ALEC's name is not between lawmakers, but between lawmakers and such behind-the-scenes powers as Altria, AT&T, Bayer, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, GlaxoSmithKline, Intuit, Johnson & Johnson, Koch Industries, Kraft Foods, Peabody Energy, Pfizer, Reynolds American, State Farm Insurance, UPS, and Walmart. These giants form ALEC's "private enterprise board," and they are among the self-interested corporations that put up its money and shape its agenda. State reps pay only a token $50 a year to be members of ALEC, while at least 82 percent of the $6 million yearly budget comes from corporations (ALEC demurely refuses to name its donors, much less report how much each gives, nor will it disclose how it spends the money). What do corporations get for their tax-deductible donations? A greased skid for sliding their wish list into the laws of multiple states. ALEC is something of a speed dating service. It holds three national conferences a year, plus convening issue-specific policy sessions in 20 to 30 state capitols annually. These are cozy sessions that conveniently gather groups of legislators to meet in private with corporate executives. The two groups schmooze together and develop bills to help extend corporate power over workers, consumers, environmentalists, and others--then the lawmakers go back home to pass the corporations' bills. ALEC is the ultimate back room for corporate-legislative collusion. Its promotional brochure describes it as a dynamic partnership "that will define the American political landscape of the 21st century." That's no empty threat. ALEC's tête-à-têtes result in about 1,000 bills being introduced across America every legislative session, and an ALEC official proudly adds, "We usually pass about 200 bills a year." And what pieces of work they are! For example: Even before Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took office this January, ALEC agents were handing him model bills for clubbing teachers and other public employees. Pushing ALEC's attack from inside the legislature were Wisconsin state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, the rancorous, union-busting majority leader who was ALEC's state chairman last year, and state Rep. Robin Vos, the house budget slasher who heads ALEC's state organization this year. Likewise, governors in Indiana, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio have backed anti-union legislation this year that closely resembles ALEC's 'model' bills. In 2009, ALEC drew up the Voter ID Act to ban university students from using their college-issued ID's as proof of residency for voting. Seven states have adopted this model law, which is intended to bar eligible students from the voting booth. These kids must be disenfranchised, New Hampshire's house speaker bluntly said in February, because they're "voting liberal, voting their feelings, with no life experience." This model bill has been introduced in 18 other states this year in a rather obvious ploy to hold down the student vote in the 2012 presidential election. Arizona's infamous anti-Latino immigration law was crafted at an ALEC conference. The state senate leader who sponsored the bill was in the meeting, as was an eager executive from Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison operation that stands to get a nice business boost from Arizona's law. Numerous state bills have been filed to kill, dilute, or withdraw from Obama's universal healthcare reform. Many bear remarkably similar wording, perhaps because they were drawn from a special report churned out by the 'nonpartisan' ALEC, entitled "The State Legislators Guide to Repealing ObamaCare." One of ALEC's specialties is developing state laws to stop citizens from interfering with corporate whim. For example, when various communities began outlawing the use of genetically altered seeds in their area, ALEC rushed out a model bill to remove local control of seeds--11 states have passed it. Also with such climate-change deniers as Koch and Exxon funding ALEC and sitting on its board, you can guess why this corporate policy front has produced more than 800 draft measures against regulating global warming emissions--and, at least six states are considering bills nearly identical to ALEC's draft resolution for "state withdrawal from regional climate initiatives." The big lie Something unconscionable is at work here, something that is shameful, unworthy of our people, and directly contradictory to our country's founding ideals. The richest, most powerful, most privileged people in our land--in cahoots with a horde of the least principled, most venal political opportunists in civic life-- are intentionally savaging the well-being of America's majority and aggressively suppressing the democratic rights that make America America. And for what? Solely for themselves, for the aggrandizement of their own wealth and power. To pull off this grand political larceny, the narcissistic right has manufactured a huge lie that has largely been accepted as truth not only by the GOP and tea partiers, but also by the mass media, nearly all of the mainline pundit class, and too many fraidy-cat Democratic leaders, including the one in the oval office. The lie is that extreme budgetary measures (they call them "coura- geous") simply must be imposed now, this instant, in order to slay the looming deficit monster that is gorging itself on government spending at all levels. "In the name of your grandbabies," they cry, "teachers must be fired, rights smothered, pensions abrogated, Medicare tossed aside, little kids cut off from Head Start, and the bright promise of America's shared prosperity dimmed. We have no choice but to slash and burn." No choice? One hedge fund hustler pocketed $2.4 million last year. Not for the year--$2.4 million AN HOUR. Yet he and his ilk pay a much lower tax rate than you and I do. In recent years, huge corporations like GE, ExxonMobil, and Bank of America have pocketed billions of dollars in profit, yet paid not a dime in federal income taxes. Indeed, far from paying taxes, these three have even been handed millions of dollars in "refunds" from our public treasury in some of their profitable years. Sliding through loopholes created by their lobbyists, two-thirds of corporations in the US pay no income taxes to help cover the priceless benefits they get from our national government. America does not face a deficit crisis--we face a multi-billion dollar annual tax dodge by the most elite of moneyed elites. The money our society needs is right there--in the coffers of flagrantly rich Fortune 500 corporations and Wall Street banks, in the personal accounts of absurdly wealthy CEOs and fast-buck speculators. America is hardly a poor country. It's the richest in the history of the world, and it ought to have the very best public education program in the world, the most advanced infrastructure network, and the finest system of health care for all. Yet our 'leaders' only talk of what they can't do, of what must be cut, of how the middle class and the poor must sacrifice, of how Americans must adapt to the new normal of diminished expectations and shriveled democratic power. The ugly truth is that these despicable governors and lawmakers are willingly trashing teachers and butchering our public budgets simply to spare the privileged and plutocratic few from paying what they owe to sustain a just, democratic, and truly prosperous society. This is ridiculous. Let's tax the super-rich! We the People must join together, stand up, push back, and shift the focus in this fight from hardworking teachers to these disgusting deadbeats and their political puppets. - Jim Hightower

OH NO! Medicare is going bankrupt AGAIN!

Yet another study showing possible correlation of cell phones to brain cancer.